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Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video: A Deadbeat Plot Made By, Of & For Focus Groups

Raaj Shaandilya takes all the tropes that are working right now, and stitches together a strange mismatched story that ends so far from where it began, that its origin seems like a fever dream.

Ishita+Sengupta

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Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video. Poster detail

IT IS EASY TO SEE HOW Raaj Shaandilyaa’s Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video (VVKWK) got made even when the more pressing question of why it was made, remains unanswered till the end. Here are my guesses. Shaandilyaa wrote a scene and sent it for market research. He then wrote another and tested it out at market research. If you press your ears close to the film, although I would advise against it, you can almost hear a voice saying, “Small town films are working? Say no more”, “Horror comedies are working? Say no more”, “Triptii Dimri is freshly popular? Say no more”, “Stree 2 earned 800 crores? Say no more”, “Social message films are still in vogue? Say no more”. This research technique where feedback and reactions are collected through group interaction has a name: focus groups. Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video, whose acronym reads like a captcha determined to render everyone a robot, is a film made by focus groups, for focus groups and of focus groups.

Another way of putting this is to acknowledge that VVKWK has not one bone of originality in its body. Every idea is recycled, every joke sounds repurposed, every message is a reiteration and every song is either lifted from the 90s’ or sounds like one. It might be a little unfair to pull VVKWK up given how widely nostalgia has infiltrated every other Hindi film but Shaandilyaa refuses to even do it well. He takes all the tropes that are working right now, throws in some songs and stitches together a strange mismatched story that ends so far away from the way it begins that its origin looks like a fever dream.

Shaandilyaa, of course, has never been the most promising directorial voice. His first two films, Dream Girl (2019) and Dream Girl 2 (2023) had more gags than dialogues, a problem tied to his extensive work in comedy shows in the television industry. The medium has changed but Shaandilyaa refuses to. With VVKWK, the same problems persist. Scenes are force-fitted just to make a joke out of it, random characters are introduced (they vanish without a trace) to arrive at a pre-decided punchline. Think of it this way. First comes the jokes, then comes more jokes and then the story is designed around them. The rapidity with which they are thrown at us is telling of the director’s fear of losing the audience.

I would say the fear is legitimate. There is no dearth of formulaic Hindi films and for a while VVKWK unfolds like that. It adopts the small-town template, puts in some quirky characters, injects an ingenious problem and spends the rest of its runtime looking for a solution. So far any Ayushmann Khurrana film. The problem starts when VVKWK wants to be ambitious and dispense sermons about feminism even when it treats the female characters with the afterthought that most Bandra restaurants reserve for parking spaces. An easy example would be the female lead who is supposed to be a doctor but even after 152 minutes, one does not know if she treats human beings or animals.

The year is 1997 and in Rishikesh, a married couple wants to make a video of their wedding night. The husband, Vicky (Rajkummar Rao in a disappointing turn) tells his wife, Vidya (Triptii Dimri, who could have as well been on the sets of Bad Newz) convinces his wife by saying that the couples in the West do it. After throwing a tantrum (the emotional bandwidth of Vidya’s personality ranges from being horny to annoyed), she agrees. On their honeymoon in Goa, a video is recorded and within a few days, it gets stolen post a burglar attack. The rest of the film is about the way Vicky and Vidya try to get hold of the CD before the era of digitisation made such things messier.

Although this might read like a half-decent plot, Shaandilyaa takes it up as a challenge to ruin it. Hence, he takes more detours than puja pandals in Kolkata, and includes a random gangster subplot, a pointless trip to the cemetery, an unfunny running gag of mistaken identities (two women in the film are called Chanda- one of them is Mallika Sherawat) and some bizarre moments about older people either falling on each other or wanting to fall on each other (Tiku Talsania and Rakesh Bedi are the victims, so is Archana Puran Singh). By the time the second half arrives, the film runs out of jokes and keeps shapeshifting from heavy-handed drama to horror comedy. All of it feels so absurd that at some point I was convinced it was all a dream and that the film had ended. Surely that’s not Daler Mehndi doing the hook steps of Gangnam Style?

But here I am writing these many words to confirm that all of it happened and that even four writers (Shaandilyaa being one of them) could not come up with something that resembles a functional plot. Then what remains? Bits of my sanity. Chunks of my rage. And a distinct image seared into my brain: multiple women baring their chest to the camera as the hero takes his time and performs a monologue about women safety while dictating that making such videos is careless and assuming he can speak for all.

Beneath the layers of lame jokes, Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video is a sordid attempt at disguising conservativeness. Examples are plenty: the whole plot plays out like a cautionary tale, the women are reduced to punchlines (writing so lazy that two of them even share a name), and the inkling of older people having any desire is ballooned to a ridiculous scene. Then what remains? A lone Vijay Raaz acting like his rent is due. If the film counts for any bright spots at all, all of them are indebted to the presence of the actor. He plays a police inspector smitten with Vicky’s sister, Chanda (Sherawat). It is a hackneyed role but Raaz elevates it like the way only he can. The way he speaks, the way he walks, even the heart-dotted scarf he wears for a midnight date makes VVKWK more watchable than it is. His turn lends a joy to the proceedings that feels both short-lived and misleading at once. For, even Vijay Raaz cannot tilt this deadbeat plot to victory. IKYK.